Pressure Nigeria to disband Hisbah, ban Sharia law, Obadare tells US congress during hearing

Ebenezer Obadare, a Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), says the United States should pressure Nigeria to make the Sharia law unconstitutional.

Obadare spoke as an expert witness at a roundtable convened by US lawmakers on Tuesday in Washington to discuss Nigeria’s escalating insecurity and an alleged targeted persecution of Christians.

At the discussion, US lawmakers had accused the Nigerian government of trying to run out the clock on the matter.

They described the killings as “a targeted campaign of religious cleansing”, vowing to act quickly and save more lives.

Obadare pointed to unchecked jihadist terror groups, particularly Boko Haram, as the root cause of the violence.

“Boko Haram’s barbarous and implacable campaign to overthrow the Nigerian state and establish an Islamic caliphate in its stead is the source of Nigeria’s present discontents,” he said.

“Every proposal to solve the Nigerian crisis that does not take seriously the need to radically degrade and ultimately eliminate Boko Haram as a fighting force is a non-starter.”

The CFR fellow said pressuring the Nigerian government with incentives would be an effective strategy to combat the terror groups.

Some of the proposed actions included making the Sharia law unconstitutional and disbanding the Hisbah, a Muslim religious police force.

“As recent events have shown, the Nigerian authorities are not impervious to incentives,” Obadare said.

“Since the country’s Country of Particular Concern (CPC) designation and President Trump’s threat of unilateral military action against Boko Haram, President Tinubu has made several moves, including ordering air strikes against Boko Haram targets, the recruitment of an additional 30,000 policemen, and, most recently, declaring a national security emergency in the country.

“Washington must keep up the pressure. The policy goal should be two-fold: first, work with the Nigerian military to neutralise Boko Haram.

“Second, the United States should put pressure on President Tinubu to (1) make Sharia law unconstitutional in the 12 northern states where they have been adopted since 2000 and (2) disband the various Hisbah groups across northern states seeking to enforce and impose Islamic law on all citizens regardless of their religious identity.”

The Hisbah operates in northern Nigerian states, primarily enforcing Sharia law among Muslims by promoting virtue and discouraging vice.

Sharia has been instituted as a main body of civil and criminal law in the country’s Muslim-majority states since 1999. The law does not apply to Christians.

However, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) alleged receiving reports of Hisbah targeting Christians.